Pursuing a policy of unconditional surrender24
The decisions to continue operations in the Mediterranean and in the Pacific had the anticipated effect of moving BOLERO to the bottom of the priority list, and there was no great buildup of U.S. troops in Britain for the first half of 1943. By the end of February 1943, “the European Theater of Operations had become a stand-by theater manned by a skeleton crew.”25
Near the end of the Casablanca conference, on 22 January 1943, the Combined Chiefs discussed a paper presented by the Combined Planners called Proposed Organization of Command, Control, Planning and Training for Operations for a Re-entry to the Continent across the Channel beginning in 1943. The idea of some sort of staff had been discussed by the British chiefs at least since August of 1942. As they noted then, “The organization, planning and training for eventual entry into the Continent should continue so that this operation can be staged should a marked deterioration in German military strength become apparent, and the resources of the United Nations available after meeting other commitments, so permit.”26 An aide-mémoire written by the secretary of the COS committee before a meeting with the ROUNDUP planners during the same month noted that a joint and combined staff could be formed, headed by a “Brigadier or equivalent rank. This syndicate would have at their disposal the considerable quantity of information … which has already been collected for ROUNDUP.”27
The Combined Chiefs agreed with the proposal to form a U.S./British staff to bring cohesion to the planning process for an eventual cross-Channel operation. Where, when, or with what forces was not specified. They intentionally did not appoint a commander or deputy commander to lead the operation, in part because no operation had been authorized. It was also likely that neither General Brooke nor General Marshall could identify a competent commander who, along with his staff, could be spared from more urgent assignments. FDR had proposed a British supreme commander while Churchill suggested that it was only necessary for someone to look to the planning at this stage. At a later meeting the Combined Chiefs proposed that a British officer be assigned as chief of staff for the time being.28
In examining this proposal FDR questioned whether “sufficient drive would be applied if only a Chief of Staff were appointed.” General Brooke thought that “a man with the right qualities … could do what was necessary in the early stages.” It was left at that.29
“A Common Bond of Danger” is a phrase used by Maurice Matloff, Strategic Planning for Coalition Warfare, 1943–1944, in U.S. Army and World War II (Washington, D.C.: Center of Military History, 1959), 18.
— 2 —
“NO SUBSTANTIAL LANDING IN FRANCE UNLESS WE ARE GOING TO STAY”
Shortly after taking command of 1st Corps in May 1942, Lt. Gen. Sir Frederick Morgan found that it was becoming difficult “to work up much enthusiasm in the preparations to meet so unlikely an event as a German seaborn invasion.”1 To rekindle interest and enthusiasm in the professional lives of his troops and subordinate commanders, who “had had their fill of manning coast defenses,” he proposed that 1st Corps consider taking the offensive. What better offensive action to take than to plan a crossing of the Rhine and invading Germany?
As he wrote the outline for this map study / command exercise, he found himself “confronted with the problem of how to get 1st British Corps from Yorkshire to Hamburg and points east.”
Appalled by the immense difficulties of such an operation that the briefest consideration made only too obvious, this being an affair of the imagination only, we decided to solve the problem by means of a simple assumption. Starting with the heartening passage, “The British Army having successfully invaded Germany from the Northwest … ” our prospectus went on to describe a situation of reasonable orthodoxy. But it was a refreshing change to be toying with German place names rather than those of our own home towns.2
Morgan was right to be appalled. There wasn’t much history of large-scale amphibious assaults or of combined operations in the British terminology of the time (attempted landings from the sea against prepared enemy defenses) in the two hundred years or so before World War II. The one most people could remember, the Gallipoli campaign, didn’t inspire confidence in the concept. Nor had attempts in Norway or Dakar in the current war done much to rebalance the record.
It’s true that there were landings from the sea throughout history. The British had a particular fondness for “descents” or raids, but those were, in the main, unopposed landings, seeking to “hit ’em where they ain’t” followed by either a brief action and return to the sea or by a set battle, as in the case of Quebec during the Seven Years’ War, or at New York in the American War of Independence.3 How to “kick the door in,” fight one’s way ashore, and stay with a modern army was a different matter. What could be said was that amphibious operations on a larger scale than ever seen or imagined were the only way for the Allies to take the fight to both the Germans and the Japanese. While there was some study of the subject before World War II, how to do it was largely worked out during the war as operations were conducted—and there was no one agreed-on way of doing it.
In 1938 the British created a modest establishment, the Inter-Service Training and Development Centre, staffed by four officers: a Royal Navy captain, a British Army major, a Royal Air Force wing commander, and a captain of the Royal Marines. Their task, as then captain L. E. H. Maund, the “chairman” of the center, put it, was to show that an assault from the sea “was practical, to indicate how the assault should go and to design and build the equipment that would make it practical.”4
By the time war broke out they had managed to design and have built a small number of landing craft of various types, primarily for the raids they envisioned would occur. They had given consideration to what kind of beach organization there should be to handle troops and supplies that had landed, experimented with raids launched from submarines, examined what types of vessels could be converted into transports or assault ships, and put forth some general theories of operation, mainly regarding small “hit-and-run” operations with an emphasis on gaining tactical surprise, landing at night, and, consequently, the minimal use of naval gunfire support.
In 1940 and again in 1941 they placed what were at the time large orders with Andrew Higgins of New Orleans, whose boats were also being ordered by the U.S. Marines. Higgins, the inheritor of a great deal of money as well as a timber business, was a trained naval architect and had a great deal of experience building fast, light, wooden boats that were at home in the bayous and that had been highly desired by rumrunners and bootleggers during Prohibition.5 The British preferred Higgins’ thirty-six-foot version while the Marines opted for the thirty-two-foot size, the British and Higgins believing that the larger boat was a better sea boat and had the advantage of carrying a few more men.
For U.S. armed forces, the Marines had spent the most time thinking about amphibious warfare, beginning with America’s pivot toward Asia that started in the 1920s. As with most projects in the interwar years, training and exercises were modest, as were the budgets, and much of what was considered was essentially theoretical. The Marines published the Tentative Manual for Landing Operations in 1934, which was adopted by the Navy in 1937; with modifications, it remained “the book” during World War II. The Marines rejected the idea of night landings and surprise, believing that the difficulties outweighed the advantages. Instead, they opted for the employment of naval gunfire support, close air support, and ultimately days or weeks of preparatory bombardment. “There was no ambiguity in the doctrine. Surprise was not significant. Battles were, ideally, to be won with the deliberate, methodical, sustained use of overwhelming firepower, followed up by a direct, mass infantry assault.”6 This was to be World War II in the central Pacific.
The
